The Oracle (Fargo Adventures #11) - Clive Cussler Page 0,45

hand, pain coursing through her fingers as he squeezed them between his. “If they find out you’re a girl, they’ll take you away. They’ll . . .” His gaze flicked to an empty chair at the table, where her aunt used to sit. He paused and gave a deep sigh. He’d never spoken about what had happened to her, why she was no longer there, and Nasha had never dared ask.

“I’m sorry,” she said, having no idea what she’d done to rouse his anger.

He said nothing at first, just watched the tears slipping down her cheeks. Realizing he still held her hand, he let loose, suddenly pulling her into his arms. “No more crying. You’re a boy now. You’re Nash.”

“But I’m not.”

“You are. And you can never tell anyone different. If they find out . . .” He held her away from him, looking deep into her eyes. “I’ll get you out of here. However long it takes. But until then, you must do as I say. Understand?”

She nodded. “But when can I go to school?”

“They hunt the schools. Destroy them. Take the girls. It’s not safe.”

And that she did understand. She’d seen the empty building, listened to the wind whistling through the broken windows.

Her uncle was determined that would not be her fate. For the next six weeks he disguised her right beneath the terrorists’ noses, sending her to work the fields by day and hiding her at night. Her best friend in the village, Chuk, thought she was a boy. Her uncle refused to let her tell him the truth. Their life was lonely, hard, but filled with love. At night he read to her from an old tattered book of proverbs that had been borrowed decades ago from the library in Jalingo, a day’s bus ride from his village. “Someday,” her uncle told her, “we’ll take the bus and get a new book.”

That day never came. One night, her uncle shook her awake. “Time to go.”

“It’s too early. The sun isn’t even up.”

“Nasha,” he said, not dropping the a at the end of her name for the first time since she’d come to him. “Move. Quickly.”

She roused herself from her cot, reaching for the lantern.

“No light,” he said, handing over her clothes.

She dressed in the dark. And he put her in the back of a borrowed truck along with a half-dozen other boys who were destined to become the next unwilling soldiers of Boko Haram. They picked up Chuk last. A year younger than her, he started crying as the truck bounced along the dirt road on their way out of the village.

Nasha took his hand in hers. “We’ll stay together, like my uncle says. And watch out for each other. Okay?”

“Promise?” Chuk said.

“Promise.”

Her uncle drove them to Jalingo. He’d made a deal with someone who promised to take care of the boys until he could come back for them.

That had been well over a year ago.

The man he’d entrusted had pocketed the money, leaving the boys to fend for themselves.

Some of them ran off. Nasha, Chuk, and one other boy, Len, were picked up by the Kalu brothers as they wandered the streets of Jalingo. They may have escaped Boko Haram but they’d landed in a completely different hell, of that she had no doubt. The oldest Kalu brother, Kambili, had always told them this was their fate. This was what society’s rejects deserved.

As much as she tried not to believe him, a part of her figured there was some truth to his words. Wasn’t that why bad things kept happening to her?

Shaking off the old memories, especially the hurt of Chuk’s betrayal, Nasha crept toward the partially open shed door and peered out. She startled when she saw Mrs. Fargo, Miss Amal, and the four older girls surrounded by men with rifles.

Frightened, she glanced toward the closed trapdoor, longing for the feeling of security, wondering if anyone would let her in if she were to knock.

Still, she hesitated. Those girls down there might not be like her. But once she had been like them, thinking there was nothing else in the world but loving parents and a new day. And as much as she wanted to return to that life, free from Boko Haram and the likes of the Kalu brothers, she refused to knock on the door. If someone heard her, every one of those girls would be in danger.

Heavy footsteps scuffed across the courtyard toward the shed, and she hurried back to her